Acquisition of Steinebronn Industrietechnik finalized

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On 27 April 2004 ERIKS group nv announced having reached an agreement in principle for the acquisition of all activities (asset deal) of Steinebronn Industrietechnik in Stuttgart, Germany.

The due diligence has now been completed and the agreement to acquire the activities has been signed. The purchase price to the amount of € 8.9 millions has been fully financed from the company’s own resources. In purchase price included goodwill amounts to approximately € 2 millions. The results of Steinebronn Industrietechniek will be consolidated as of 1 June 2004.

The activities of Steinebronn Industrietechnik comprise the marketing, sale and partly the processing of products and services especially in the field of power transmissions. With its headquarters in Stuttgart, Steinebronn also has an operation in Saarbrücken.

With approx. 130 employees Steinebronn achieves annual sales of € 28.0 millions and delivers its products directly to industrial end-users (maintenance and OEM customers) mainly located in the German federal state Baden-Württemberg (in the southwest of Germany).

Sales by product group in the core activity power transmissions can be broken down as follows:

The activities of Steinebronn fit close to those of the existing companies of the cluster ERIKS Germany. This acquisition fits in with ERIKS’ policy of expanding its market area by way of a rollout strategy.

With this acquisition ERIKS:

expands its activities geographical to the important industrial federal state Baden-Württemberg

is, with the operations of the Heusinger + Salmon Group (in and in the area of Hamburg, Hanover, Bielefeld, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt and Mannheim) and Schötz Industrietechnik GmbH (in and in the area of Munich, Nuremberg and Regensburg) present in almost all of Germany

achieves a substantial strengthening of its core activity power transmissions

gets the opportunity to also offer the other products groups of its assortment in the area where Steinebronn is located.

Through this acquisition sales of the cluster ERIKS Germany will increase to well over € 90 millions and the number of employees to 425.